Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • fullsquare@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    6 days ago

    there was a post shared out there recentlyish (blogpost? substack? can’t find it. enjoy vagueposting) that was about how ai companies have no clue what they’re doing, and compared them to alchemy in that they also had no idea what they were doing, and over time moved on to more realistic goals, but while they had funding for these unrealistic goals they invented distillation and crystallization and black powder and shit. and the same for ai would be buildout of infra that can be presumably used for something later (citation needed).

    so comparison of this entire ea/lw/openai milieu to alchemists is unjust for alchemists. alchemy has that benefit on its side that it was developed before scientific method was a proper thing, modern chatbot peddlers can’t really claim that what they’re doing is protoscience. what is similar is that alchemy and failed ea scifi writers claim that magic tech will get you similar things. cure for all disease (nanobots), immortality (cryonics or mind uploading or nanobots), infinite wisdom (chatbots), transformation of any matter at will (nanobots again), mind control derived from supreme rationality (ok this one comes from magic), synthetic life (implied by ai bioweapons, but also agi itself). when chinese alchemists figured out that mercury pills kill people and don’t make them immortal, there was a shift to “inner alchemy” that is spiritual practices (mental tech). maybe eliezer &co are last alchemists (so far) and not first ai-safety-researchers

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    6 days ago

    Saw an AI-extruded “art” “timelapse” in the wild recently - the “timelapse” in question isn’t gonna fool anyone who actually cares about art, but it’s Good Enoughtm to pass muster on someone mindlessly scrolling, and its creation serves only to attack artists’ ability to prove their work was human made.

    This isn’t the first time AI bros have pulled this shit (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), by the way.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    7 days ago

    I was wondering about the origins of sneerclub and discovered something kinda fun: “r/SneerClub” pre-dates “r/BlogSnark”, the first example of a “snark subreddit” listed on the wiki page! The vibe of snark subreddits seem to be very different to that of sneerclub etc. (read: toxic!!!) but I wouldn’t know the specifics as I’m not a snark participant.

  • JFranek@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    7 days ago

    Was jumpscared on my YouTube recommendations page by a video from AI safety peddler Rob Miles and decided to take a look.

    It talked about how it’s almost impossible to detect whether a model was deliberately trained to output some “bad” output (like vulnerable code) for some specific set of inputs.

    Pretty mild as cult stuff goes, mostly anthropomorphizing and referring to such LLM as a “sleeper agent”. But maybe some of y’all will find it interesting.

    link

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      7 days ago

      This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about this - Baldur Bjarnason’s talked about how text extruders can be poisoned to alter their outputs before, noting its potential for manipulating search results and/or serving propaganda.

      Funnily enough, calling a poisoned LLM as a “sleeper agent” wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate - spicy autocomplete, by definition, cannot be aware that their word-prediction attempts are being manipulated to produce specific output. Its still treating these spicy autocompletes with more sentience than they actually have, though

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      7 days ago

      The article claims that Google didn’t “fall for the same trap” but that’s not correct, all this garbage is indeterministic so the author just got “lucky”.

      It’s like saying “four out of five coin-flips claimed that an eagle was the first US president” – just because the fifth landed on heads and showed George Washington doesn’t mean it’s any different than the rest.

      But here I’m preaching to the choir.

  • antifuchs@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    8 days ago

    Whichever one of you did https://alignmentalignment.ai/caaac/jobs, well done, and many lols.

    CAAAC is an open, dynamic, inclusive environment, where all perspectives are welcomed as long as you believe AGI will annihilate all humans in the next six months.

    Alright, I can pretend to believe that, go on…

    We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits, including no performance management because we have no way to assess whether the work you do is at all useful.

    Incredible. I hope I get the job!

  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    12 days ago

    Some poor souls who arguably have their hearts in the right place definitely don’t have their heads screwed on right, and are trying to do hunger strikes outside Google’s AI offices and Anthropic’s offices.

    https://programming.dev/post/37056928 contains links to a few posts on X by the folks doing it.

    Imagine being so worried about AGI that you thought it was worth starving yourself over.

    Now imagine feeling that strongly about it and not stopping to ask why none of the ideologues who originally sounded the alarm bells about it have tried anything even remotely as drastic.

    On top of all that, imagine being this worried about what Anthropic and Google are doing in the research of AI, hopefully being aware of Google’s military contracts, and somehow thinking they give a singular shit if you kill yourself over this.

    And… where’s the people outside fucking OpenAI? Bets on this being some corporate shadowplay shit?

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      12 days ago

      I mean, I try not to go full conspiratorial everything-is-a-false-fllag, but the fact that the biggest AI company that has been explicitly trying to create AGI isn’t getting the business here is incredibly suspect. On the other hand, though, it feels like anything that publicly leans into the fears of evil computer God would be a self-own when they’re in the middle of trying to completely ditch the “for the good of humanity, not just immediate profits” part of their organization.

      • bigfondue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        12 days ago

        Didn’t OpenAI just file court documents claiming that their opposition is funded by competitors? Accusing someone else of what they themselves are doing seems to be a pretty popular strategy these days.

      • JFranek@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        12 days ago

        It’s two guys in London and one guy in San Francisco. In London there’s presumably no OpenAI office, in SF, you can’t be at two places at once and Anthropic has more true believers/does more critihype.

        Unrelated, few minutes before writing this a bona-fide cultist replied to the programming dev post. Cultist with the handle “BussyGyatt @feddit.org”. Truly the dumbest timeline.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        12 days ago

        I dont know anything about the locations of any offices, but could it he that openAI just didnt have any local places? Asking them why not all worked ld be a good journalist question

        But otoh it is just two three of them, and the second ones photo gives off a weird vibe. Why is he smiling like it is a joke?

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      11 days ago

      Lol at the critihype from the BussyGyatt person in that post. Come on LLMs will not become AGI, and that leaves LLMs ‘predicting shutdowns will be bad for their goals’ which is only so because people like this have kept saying it an the LLMs have trained on it. If you really worried about this, you’d stop feeding that data to it.

    • scruiser@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 days ago

      This feels like a symptom of liberals having a diluted incomplete understanding of what made past movements that utilized protest succeed or fail.

      • V0ldek@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 days ago

        This is always what you get when your fundamental belief is “capitalism good”, so no matter how close you get to “and the problem is capitalism” you can never actually get there, like in a crazy version of edging.

        What I’m saying is that libs are philosophical gooners

  • Architeuthis@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    11 days ago

    Apparently the hacker who publicized a copy of the no fly list was leaked an article containing Yarvin’s home address, which she promptly posted on bluesky. Won’t link because I don’t think we’ve had the doxxing discussion but It’s easily findable now.

    I’m mostly posting this because the article featured this photo:

  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    Word of warning, if you are squeemish, Charlie Kirk got shot, and closeup videos of him getting shot are over social media and people have not put warnings up. Managed to avoid it myself, but careful with autoplaying gifs, and use this link https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3lyiw3vi3yc2c for instructions how to turn that off.

    E: and it was a groyper, stop your bets ladies and gentlebots. The winner of the bet is, acausalrobotgod! Again! What a predictive streak. (E2: im just making a joke here on betting markets and how ACRG would win them all because acausal magic, don’t bet on peoples lives and don’t use betting markets).

    E: while im editing this post with corrections, turns out that Kirk was a lot worse than I thought and he wasn’t just a garden variety propagandist like a Shapiro/Crowder etc. (yeah I know they both also try to branch out into more media). He was doing a lot of shit work on the ground, and one of those guys who was really influential with younger people. Read that this might also explain the extreme rightwing reaction, as he was seen by some as a next big political player. To me, very online leftwinger from europe, he just was the worst joke from a line of other propagandists, but I was wrong on that.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      9 days ago

      Irrationally annoyed at yanks incorrecting each other how this kind of shot could only be pulled off by a trained expert sniper. The Behind the Bastards guy agrees, but the replies are still stuffed with examples.

      I know from experience that even mediocre conscripts shooting a gun for the first time in their life usually manage to land hits in a one foot diameter circle from 150 metres with iron sights on an intermediate catridge rifle. It doesn’t take an elite marksman to hit a sitting man from 200 yards away, especially with a scope. Even if nervous and high on adrenaline, an average hunter, target shooter or (ex) military type would be more likely than not to hit a target of that size at that distance, assuming otherwise decent conditions.

      Hell, the factory sights on an M16 are supposed to be set for zero elevation at 250 metres and the effective range for most assault rifles and their semi auto civilian variants is around 300 metres. To say you need to be a trained sniper to make this shot is like saying you need to be a professional racing driver to do 80 mph on a highway.

      If there’s one thing you’d assume seppos know well, it’s shooting firearms, but some people still can’t help but spout dumb bullshit.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        9 days ago

        “One of our guys was murdered; it could have only been an elite Navy SEAL with over 300 confirmed kills!!!” them, probably

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        edit-2
        9 days ago

        Yeah, I think the whole ‘quickly getting away without leaving a trace’ is more sign of some training. But, this is reduced in being likely by the whole FBI just being filled with incompetent goons, podcasters, racists, who are now playing ‘find the person of color’ and not doing the actual FBI things.

        I mean I have no high opinion of groypers, so I don’t think they are well trained soldiers or something so take that into account. Exmil just has a higher willingness to kill people.

        But yes, very good to point out thanks. Esp as Evans has experience in these things, and can generally be relied upon. (Apart from his views on 40k being too rosy).

        We can prob rule out a Luigi style killer as there was no shellcasing with words on it found as far as I can tell.

        • bitofhope@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          9 days ago

          Even in Luigi’s case, it took days to catch a guy who (allegedly, lol) killed a billionaire in the middle of Manhattan. Though very dashing, Mangione hardly seems like a navyseal elite supersoldier ninja hitman 47 either. Whatever Kirk’s killer’s motive, I see little reason to assume it was necessarily a pro job. All this tells us is that overfunding and militarization doesn’t equate to a more competent police force.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            8 days ago

            Yeah, and he had motive because of his intense pain, still a weird Rationalist adjacent type guy was not a likely subject. And sadly we knew the latter already.

            It has been long long ago, but I recall that when London put CCTVs everywhere the chief of police there admitted it had not caused a drop in crime not helped them catch criminals. But he still wanted to place more of them and more money. Just a strange sort of welfare project for pervert police people.

            E: and look all that police power, and he gets caught be cause he admitted it to his dad.

            • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              ·
              9 days ago

              also, I was at Bible study with Luigi at the time a CEO coincidentally had a bullet-involved collision, as were you

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                edit-2
                9 days ago

                During the lead of usual speed incident?

                Yep we were, we were talking about hiring jetskis. Strange how they never used the pictures of him on the jetski in the news like how they do with all the white guys who shoot up a place. Wait, that means they know he was innocent just like we do.

        • gerikson@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          9 days ago

          Reports are shell cases with messages have been found. My money is still on it being a false flag.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            9 days ago

            Yeah, to me the whole finding of casings makes no sense. Like if you put a message on them, leave them there. (also bolt your gun if you might want to shoot it again). Just odd. Also odd they don’t mention the messages on them directly. Which normally get plastered all over social media. (Which is bad btw, don’t spread extremist messaging without context, I really hope they finally learned this, and this isn’t a case of them hiding the message to make it sound more extreme than it was).

            But yes, I spoke too soon. Anyway, as I’m the negative Cassandra, let me say this. We can rule out it being a Rationalist, we have not found a copy of HPMOR on the scene as far as I can tell.

            E: update on the writing, might be wrong

            • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              9 days ago

              Even if we had the shooter may have just been looking for something heavy enough to brace against for the shot. You can’t exactly carry a set of encyclopedias up to the top of the book depository or wherever without attracting attention.

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                edit-2
                9 days ago

                You can’t exactly carry a set of encyclopedias up to the top of the book depository or wherever without attracting attention.

                Not sure about that, I don’t want to talk about specifics as I rather not have people know exactly where I live but you could do a lot on the roofs of our uni without people noticing. Doors were not even locked.

                But it makes sense for a shooter to bring something they know the hight off, like their personally signed copy of HPMOR.

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                edit-2
                8 days ago

                Fyi that manufacturer does not make 30 06 ammo. So it isnt true. Story goes that the source for the whole messages story is Crowder, that he dropped it before the mainstream news. Not a reliable source, wtf media.

                E: turns out I was wrong sorry about that. But due to the casings we now know he was likely enough to be a groyper for me to call him one. I’ll update the first post with a link to my skeet about it. But the song he used was in a ‘groyper war’ playlist. The song didn’t make sense to me anyway.

                • swlabr@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  8 days ago

                  crowder just mad that the title on the tent was “prove me wrong” and not “change my mind”

        • CinnasVerses@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          6 days ago

          Piper’s self-described many unpopular beliefs that the rest of society considers loathsome

          If Piper ever starts to publish essays on what goals and policy positions she thinks make her or SlateScott “sincere centre-leftists” they are going to be a trip. Just the explanation why she feels more comfortable saying what she believes under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Big Balls than under Biden’s centrist technocrats would require a few doses of my favourite substance to get through.

          Edit: I would also love to hear “so you agree that the talking head on Fox News who suggested executing the homeless is despicable, what about your friend Scott Alexander proposing to sterilize the poor and substance users before they receive help?”

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        8 days ago

        Yeah and missing the point that a lot of people think ‘some ideas are so shit they shouldn’t be debated the right way’ esp not ideas about others who are not you and stuff we have debated (and fought over) again and again already. It is like the IRA, Kirk needs to be lucky once, trans people/minorities/university professors(*) need to be lucky every time, again and again, forever. This is just the dumbest level of object level vs meta level thinking out there. When somebody enters the marketplace with sawdust they claim is flour every week you toss them out, don’t let them in next time. And you should notice they only try to sell this ‘flour’ to the poor.

        *: my second point, Piper is also very full of shit here. You know what happened to uni professors who debated/corrected/were women/poc in his space? They got put on the TPUSA watchlist and got death and rape threats. He was part of the organisation who ran that database. So this imagined idealized platonic Kirk shaped object isn’t even real. Hell you can see in debates the tricks he pulls so his side thinks he wins. That creepy smile he makes after a point that he knows is bullshit, that is to knock people off balance so people react oddly (as it is a really creepy smile) and don’t react to the dumb shit he just said. See this clip for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jrsy1aB6OSk (it cuts off before she talks about how creepy his smile is). Note he is lying about the fetus thing, and if this wasn’t a high stress debate and people got time to think about things they would just reply with ‘so a dolphin fetus is a dolphin little human being?’. But that is professional debaters vs college students for you. This is not a man who was interested in truth or having his mind changed. And this smile is not some incident, he does it in other places. But his audience is preprimed on thinking they are the logic and reason people, so they consider somebody going ‘what the fuck did you just do with your face’ as a way to dodge the argument, so in their eyes this is a win for him.

        I find that all these debatebro types have some of these tricks, in addition to often controlling the mic. Peterson refuses to explain, Shapiro demands you accept his premise from the start ‘for the argument’ (yeah if you are right you are right, but the debate is about if you are right not ‘assume im right’). The ‘I refuse your question’ guy is simply somebody who noticed one of those debatebro tricks and refused to go along with it. (the patron saint, may your hair remain long, and your bluetooth have good connections forever). Note that this prob doesn’t work on the more experienced debatebros as they would have prepared an answer for ‘why can’t we both have lgbt people and economic stability’ and it gives them a way to spout hate and misinfo again. As all work is skilled work, being a bad faith debate bro propagandist is also a skill (which the Koch brothers paid Kirk well for).

        Related to this “Those who walk away from debatebros”.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 days ago

          It’s also yet another case of privileged people somehow failing to understand that there is no “right” way to advocate for tearing families apart or purging people who don’t fit your ideal. Like, I’m not a fan of political violence but I’m also not going to act like this asshole was any less part of the problem because he ostensibly believed in respecting the state’s monopoly on violence as he advocated for that violence to be used against me and mine.

      • scruiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 days ago

        I’m at least enjoying the many comments calling her out, but damn she just doubles down even after being given many many examples of him being a far-right nationalist monster who engaged in attempts to outright subvert democracy.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        According to this https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lyj2o4cuvc2g , and I think a fox news news report he is dead.

        He was shot while he was trying to blame gun violence on trans people and gang violence basically. In a moment of weird poetry.

        But I just posted this here to warn people. A tip if you see something traumatic: https://bsky.app/profile/baroness.bsky.social/post/3lyj32qx2os2f go play some videogames to not sear it into your mind.

        Anyway, doubt they will make the diaper guy the new Horst Wessel.

        E: a awful.systems relevant lol: https://bsky.app/profile/lasergiant.bsky.social/post/3lyixmkzfuc2r

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            9 days ago

            Yep, he sucked. Big question I have is why. He is a propagandist in the ‘free speech on campus’ wars, and they won the battle and unis are caving and banning free speech. Of all the targets he makes no sense to me (not that any of them do to me, assassination has a very poor track record, people still whine about Pim in the Netherlands, and pretend all violence comes from the left (despite reality proving otherwise)).

            So considering his history with groypers, who got big partially attacking Kirk for not being extreme enough, wouldn’t be shocked if it is a groyper. Or an exmil who lost a kid in a shooting.

            I mean why shoot the guy that looks like a budget steven crowder and a broken stretchy arms toy doll had a teleporter accident.

            • bitofhope@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              8 days ago

              Imagine if it turns out that it wasn’t even politically motivated and he just owed a bunch of money or something.

            • fullsquare@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              9 days ago

              i didn’t even thought he was relevant anymore since 2020, he was like 2017 era chud debatelord who relied entirely on gotchas. he did toe the party line tho, so maybe some divergent rightwinger didn’t like what he was doing for whatever reason. maybe it was situation like with trump shooter, probable republican that didn’t particularly like epstein link, or whatever else cause there might be involved

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                9 days ago

                I don’t think he has been relevant, he was on some 1 X debates 20 !X shows, where he showed the creepiest smile after being wrong about latin, and that was it. For the relevance of things I heard about him.

                Turns out he was relevant to the right whoever. As he apparently kept pushing the epstein link (I thought he was dismissing the epstein link) so much so that Laura Loomer decided she never wanted to hear from the guy a few days ago.

                Just very weird from what I can tell of the people of his ilk, for too online leftwingers he was a joke. Compared to a shapiro/crowder.

                • fullsquare@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  9 days ago

                  huh i honestly had no idea, and i guessed he was very replaceable in rw propaganda machine. i heard somewhere that shapiro was also supposed to be there

  • Seminar2250@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    11 days ago

    university where the professor physically threatened me and plagiarized my work called to ask if i was willing to teach a notoriously hard computer science class (that i have taught before to stellar evals as a phd student[1]). but they had to tell me that i was their last choice because they couldn’t find a full professor to teach it (since i didn’t finish my phd there because of said abusive professor). on top of that, they offered me a measly $6,000 usd for the entire semester with no benefits, and i would have to pay $500 for parking.

    should i just be done with academia? enrollment deadlines for the spring are approaching and i’m wondering if i should just find a “regular job”, rather than finishing a PhD elsewhere, especially given the direction higher ed is going in the us.


    1. evals are bullshit for measuring how well students actually learn anything, but are great for measuring the stupid shit business idiots love, like whether students will keep paying tuition. also they can be used to explain the pitfalls of using likert scales carelessly, as business idiots do. ↩︎

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      10 days ago

      Every time I learn one single thing about how academia works in the USA I want to commit unspeakable acts of violence

      • Seminar2250@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        10 days ago

        imo academia in the us selects for self-serious mini-tyrants. people unable to sleaze their way to an equivalent position in the job market, so they go with a position where their subordinates have no agency or recourse for inappropriate behavior and are entirely dependent on them for their funding and their career progress[1]. the university system here seems to only care if a professor brings in grant money — if so, they can do whatever they want.

        e.g. a year ago a student of mine with a documented, legally required accommodation was just straight denied it by a professor in my department. this poor student had to go through some equal opportunity claim just to have his accommodation met, and the professor is still there, having suffered no consequences.

        maybe i should apply to a phd program outside of the us. i speak spanish (but slowly, y como un gringo) 🤷

        😭


        1. by standing up to my piece of shit advisor, i have left with just a master’s degree after five years, despite definitely having enough research completed under this advisor to leave with a phd. i chose to stand up for myself and try to end this cycle instead of adding an acronym to my title. arguably a mistake, idk, there is a robert frost poem about this. ↩︎

    • nfultz@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 days ago

      I got paid $2700 for teaching a semester. Adjuncting sucks. It doesn’t get better.

      Even if you finished, all the postdocs I know had their NSF starter kit yanked.

    • corbin@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 days ago

      Since appearing on Piers Morgan’s show, Eric Weinstein has taken to expounding additional theories about physics. Peer review was created by the government, working with Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, to control science, he said on “Diary of a CEO,” one of the world’s most popular podcasts. Jeffrey Epstein was sent by an intelligence agency to throw physics off track and discourage space exploration, keeping humanity trapped in “the prison built by Einstein.”

      Heartbreaking! Weinstein isn’t fully wrong. Maxwell’s daddy was Robert Maxwell, who did indeed have a major role in making Springer big and kickstarting the publish-or-perish model, in addition to having incredibly tight Mossad ties; the corresponding Behind the Bastards episodes are subtitled “how Ghislane Maxwell’s dad ruined science.” Epstein has been accused of being a Mossad asset tasked with seeking out influential scientists like Marvin Minsky to secure evidence for blackmail and damage their reputations. As they say on Reddit, everybody sucks here.

      • blakestacey@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        8 days ago

        That’s just yer bog-standard “the best lie has a seed of truth”, ainnit?

        (Peer review in its modern form was adopted gradually, with a recognizable example in 1831 from the same William Whewell who coined the word scientist. It displaced the tradition of having the editor of a journal decide everything himself, so whatever its flaws, it has broadened the diversity of voices that influence what gets officially published.)

      • swlabr@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        8 days ago

        Epstein was a sophon controlled trisolaran asset working to prevent crucial development of physics!!! j/k

      • bitofhope@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        8 days ago

        First domino: US government invents peer review

        Last domino: Richard Stallman successfully kamikazes his reputation for good after multiple close attempts over the years

        • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 days ago

          Richard Stallman successfully kamikazes his reputation for good after multiple close attempts over the years

          He still maintains a solid reputation with FOSS freaks, fascists and pedophiles to this day. Given the Venn diagram of these three groups is a circle, this isn’t particularly shocking.

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              7 days ago

              I asked the other day whether they’ve actually spoken with these people that they keep posting such takes about, and thus far my presumption is “they haven’t”. posts like the above reinforce that view

          • corbin@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            8 days ago

            Fuck, your lack of history is depressing sometimes. That Venn diagram is well-pointed, even among people who have met RMS, and the various factions do not get along with each other. For a taste, previously on Lobsters you can see an avowed FLOSS communist ripping the mask off of a Suckless cryptofascist in response to a video posted by a recently-banned alt-right debate-starter.

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 days ago

      The report claims its about ethical AI use, but all I see is evidence that AI is inherently unethical, and an argument for banning AI from education forever.